British authorities turned down an offer by the Pentagon to have warplanes fly over strategic Iranian bases during the tense hostage standoff, preferring a diplomatic route instead, a London newspaper said yesterday.

But a surprise appeal by the pope, who wrote a letter to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the same day the captives were released, was a welcome, if unexpected, intervention, according to reports in The Guardian.

The Vatican confirmed yesterday that Pope Benedict XVI had intervened in the hostage crisis, appealing to the Iranian leader to do what he could to ensure the British sailors and marines were “reunited with their families in time for Easter.”

In the letter, sent just hours before the sailors were freed, Benedict said the group’s release would be seen by the international community as a “significant religious gesture of goodwill by the Iranian people.”

While it remains unclear what part the holy plea played in securing an end to the tensions, Iran’s anti-Western President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad later held a two-hour press conference in which he announced the captives would be released as an “Easter gift to the British people.”

In the first days after the illegal March 23 seizure of the service personnel in Iraqi waters, when Tehran remained cagey about the group’s whereabouts, U.S. officials offered to take military action, The Guardian reported.

A series of options was considered, including one in which U.S. combat aircraft would launch aggressive patrols over Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases.

But the offer was declined by the British, who told their U.S. counterparts they could calm tensions by butting out and scaling down military exercises in the Persian Gulf, to make them “less confrontational.”

A second aircraft carrier was positioned off Iran’s coast just three days before the sailors’ capture, on orders from President Bush to put pressure on Tehran after allegations surfaced of Iranian aid to Iraqi militia.

The British government also reportedly asked the United States to tone down its anti-Iran rhetoric during the two-week impasse.

But the United States may have played a more subdued role in resolving the deadlock, with the Tuesday release of Jalal Sharafi, a suspected member of Iran’s Quds Force, which supports terrorist Shiite militias inside Iraq.

The United States had also allowed the Red Cross to visit five other suspected Iranian Quds members, who were captured inside Iraq by American forces.

The 15 sailors and marines, who have taken flak for their ready acquiescence to their captors’ demands, have begun two weeks’ service leave to be with their families and recuperate.

They will be allowed to sell their stories to the media, in a break with usual rules, Britain’s Defense Ministry said yesterday.

Media reports have said they could earn as much as $500,000 among them.